Today's business challenges reach way beyond traditional job boundaries. So too must today's leadership.

The most important and most complex business challenges require leadership that operates outside the boxes and lines of the organizational chart. Rather than assuming boundaries to be barriers, truly collaborative leaders work best where boundaries intersect, overlap and bump up against one another. Boundary-spanning leaders bridge organizational and cultural divides; vertical and horizontal gaps; and stakeholder, demographic and geographic groupings. They thrive at finding innovative outcomes at the intersections where groups can work productively together.

Senior executives know the importance of boundary-spanning leadership. A Center for Creative Leadership study I conducted with my colleagues Jeffrey Yip and tin cup pearl necklace Michael Campbell this year found that 86% of executives considered it "extremely important" that they collaborate effectively across boundaries in their current leadership roles. But just 7% of those executives believed they were "very effective" at doing so.

Closing this gap is both a critical challenge and a hidden opportunity. To improve your organization's boundary-spanning capacity, you and other leaders need to play six interlocking roles. Each role builds on the others, and in combination they enable you to tap into the elusive but powerful value of cross-boundary collaboration.

1. Conductor. Bringing previously competitive or divided groups together across horizontal boundaries can trigger an atmosphere of threat and a palpable loss of identity. Likewise, when groups come together across vertical boundaries, issues of authority, status and power become very sensitive. Conductors are attuned to such hazards. "I learned as a mid-level leader how important it is to bridge between senior leaders and entry-level leaders across the organization," a high-ranking U.S. public-sector executive told us. As a conductor, your role is to monitor boundaries and orchestrate interactions between groups. Conductors become conduits for information, resources and people flowing across boundaries. They enable groups to feel a sense of psychological safety.

2. Ambassador. When bringing together groups that have little or bad history together, it is critical to address head-on the mindsets, beliefs and perceptions that differentiate "Us" from "Them." In the ambassador role, your work is to represent the expertise, experience and values of one group to another. Ambassadors lead by accepting current boundaries, including long-standing or entrenched differences, and finding constructive ways to reflect, describe and openly discuss them. When President Obama gave a speech in Cairo on Muslim-U.S. relations last June, he played the boundary-spanning role of ambassador. He called for a "sustained effort to listen to each other, to learn from each other, to respect one another and to seek common ground."

3. Connector. Connectors create neutral zones to pearl strand wholesale link people together and emphasize commonality. For example, an executive we spoke with at a global energy company was able to make headway on an intractable regional environmental problem by convening stakeholder groups in a neutral location and fostering interaction at a person-to-person, rather than group-to-group, level. Connectors often use after-work events, social or sports activities, or personal ties to remove assumptions and stereotypes, create collaborative relationships and build trust across groups.

4. Narrator. A shared mission, vision or goal enables groups to redraw and expand the boundaries that previously divided them. The narrator's role is to help define and give meaning to a new, unfolding purpose. When the Chinese computer company Lenovo ( LNVGY.PK - news - people ) purchased IBM's ( IBM - news - people ) global personal computer operation in 2005, its senior leaders moved quickly to define Lenovo as a "New World Company" that would synthesize the best of East and West. They scrapped symbols, roles, processes and language that they viewed as "legacy IBM" or "legacy Lenovo" to make room for the new Lenovo storyline.

5. Mediator. Mediators focus on the borderlands, intentionally leading at the juncture where similarities and differences meet. When Ingrid Srinath became the chief executive of Child Rights and You, a large nonprofit in India, she set aside her, in her words, "impatient and unreasonable" leadership style to become a mediator. On behalf of a sweeping change initiative, she asked people throughout the organization to "bring their differences into the room." People representing diverse geographic regions, ethnic and religious groups, genders and castes participated in deep and honest discussions about the organization's future direction. By tapping group differences and acting on commonalities, Ingrid successfully brought all CRY's groups along on the change journey.

6. Inventor. Inventors systematically cross-cut, mix and weave multiple boundaries in the service of organizational innovation, renewal and transformation. Whereas the mediator role looks to reconcile and integrate existing boundaries, inventors seek to cultured pearl jewelry open up current boundaries to change. One project manager at a U.S.-based financial services firm successfully harnessed the tensions within a geographically dispersed team to develop and launch a new service simultaneously across the Americas, Europe and Asia, all within six months. She composed a team that crisscrossed the organization representing a range of organization levels and functions, regions and nationalities and demographic characteristics, as well as suppliers and a customer panel. "The more my teams are capable of remaining open to disparate views, areas of expertise, and diverse experience, the greater is our transformative potential for innovative solutions," she said.

When leaders take on these six roles, boundaries become bridges to innovative and transformative solutions. As organizations around the globe wrestle with complex challenges, those that fill their ranks with boundary-spanning leaders will have the advantage.

What comes to mind when describing your day-to-day work environment? If you're like most of the respondents who took part in the Center for Work Life Policy’s recent 'Hidden Brain Drain' research, your response would likely be: "unbelievably stressful."

There's no doubt about it: The pressures of the recession are having a measurable effect on physical health and mental well-being. As I report in my new book Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down, recent research from the Center for Work-Life Policy shows that the number of high-echelon workers experiencing stress has more than doubled in the last 12 months, rising from 33% to dancing pearl 78%. Symptoms range from "crashing" at the end of the day (70% vs. 43% six months earlier) to an "emptied out" sex life (37% vs. 30%).

Participants in the study (on average, vice presidents and managing directors--in other words, the cream of the crop) also reported worrisome health issues including dependence on sleep medication, migraine headaches, anxiety attacks, immune system failure, problem drinking and overeating.

In addition, as they deal with brutal hours in tension-filled offices, many high performers can't prevent the strains at work from spilling over into their home lives, causing ill temper and spawning squabbles. With one spouse spending many hours at work, the partner often feels like a single parent: "It's obvious that I'm consumed by the company and the team and my spouse feels cheated and overburdened with the responsibility of figuring out the home and kids," said one strategy session participant. Another reported "more stupid fighting as we are both stressed and tired."

Sound familiar?

In previous columns, I've highlighted what smart companies are doing to try to break this vicious cycle. But what can you do on an individual level to get your own life back--and give the same gift to your team?

As it turns out, more than you might think.

Take Joan Amble, an EVP, Corporate Comptroller at American Express ( AXP - news - people ). Like the rest of the financial industry, her company was impacted by the economic meltdown and had to make double-digit cuts in its workforce. At the same time, the team was hit with a massive project that had to get done in literally a matter of weeks. Amble recalls worrying, "In this environment of cost and staffing cuts, how can I keep my people motivated? Given the increased pressure and minimal opportunity for reward, how can I best keep the team engaged and enthusiastic?"

Her solution came from a woman business owner in India, who her company was mentoring through the Global Women's Mentoring Partnership. Nandita runs a public relations firm. Nearly 90% of the 80 employees are women, many of whom care for young children. To freshwater pearl jewelry satisfy childcare needs, Nandita instilled a revolutionary rule: Everyone had to leave work by 6 p.m., unless they had prior approval. If clients wanted to schedule a meeting at 5:30, they were politely but firmly told that the meeting would have to take place in the morning.

As Amble listened to Nandita's story, she had a brain flash. "Wow! I can't promise my team bonuses but I can give them their life back."

She gathered her direct reports and they hammered out a four-part initiative.

Step one: Everyone had to be on their way home by 6:30. "I encouraged all my direct leaders to follow suit, because if they didn't do it, their people wouldn't."

Step two: No e-mails after 8 p.m. The first time Amble received an e-mail after 8 p.m., she sent out an auto-reply in capital letters: "PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF OUR NEW E-MAIL POLICY. SIGNED, WORK-LIFE BALANCE POLICE." Amble recalls, "It was like the shot heard 'round the world."

Step three: No e-mail on weekends or vacations.

Step four: When you take vacation or personal time, you have to delegate authority. "Assuming you've done a good job as a leader, you've hired good people so you have someone to delegate to," Amble notes.

The initiative was backed up with leadership tools, such as protocols on how to run an effective meeting. And the results started to roll in. By forcing people to prioritize and to focus on what's really important, the new discipline not only enables people to work more efficiently--it encourages them to delegate authority and empower people, a win-win situation for everyone.

Furthermore, Amble noticed that people handle day-to-day stress better. When they return from vacation, they're rejuvenated. And with more time for outside interests and exercise to allow the mind to regroup, they're thinking more creatively.

Other managers have noticed the difference--and started to emulate Amble's strategy. As one said, "My people are so much happier now that they're not getting barraged by last-minute calls and weekend e-mails."

Even more striking: Despite the "perfect storm," the attrition rate--even on two of the most challenged global teams--was near zero. The overall team has become more productive in every sense--delivering better results than in previous quarters. "And," Amble says proudly, "you can count the number of people who worked on weekends on one hand."

Looking back, Amble is the first to pearl wholesale admit that she was driving much of the unhealthy behavior. "I thought I was being efficient by dealing with e-mail on weekends. Even though I told people not to respond, of course they responded." She likes to joke that soon after the new policy went into effect, "someone came to me and said, 'I think my BlackBerry is broken because I didn't get any e-mail this weekend.'

"You know, all we did was prioritize better," Amble says. "It was so easy. We should have done this a long time ago."

Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and the founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy, a nonprofit think tank, where she leads the "Hidden Brain Drain" Task Force. She is the author of nine nonfiction books--including Off-Ramps and On-Ramps and Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down.

For college students graduating next spring, there's good news (and bad) on the job front.

Worst things first. According to a recent survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), company recruiters plan to multi-strands pearl necklace visit 6.6% fewer campuses and hire 6.9% fewer graduates than last year. So say 220 relatively large (average size: 7,000 employees) corporations, including General Electric ( GE - news - people ), Wells Fargo ( WFC - news - people ), Ford Motor ( F - news - people ), Macy's ( M - news - people ) and Halliburton ( HAL - news - people ). Now for the better news: Most job offers will probably be solid. The class of 2009 got a rotten deal, when recruiters showed up at 19.4% fewer campuses and hired 21.7% fewer college grads than they did in the previous academic year. Additionally, NACE respondents said they rescinded 9% of all offers.

Next year should be quite a bit better. The take-back rate could be as low as 1%, guesses Edwin Koc, director of strategic and foundation research at NACE--which puts it in the range of most ''normal'' years. ''This year expectations are much lower and the overall economy is improving,'' Koc explains. ''If anything, I expect maybe a bit better outcome at the end of the period than what we start with.''

Jeff Rice, executive director of career management for the Fisher school of Business at Ohio State University, agrees. ''I do think that companies are more cautious in their hiring positions and not making offers unless they can stand by them,'' he says. Rice goes one step further: He's seen a 35% increase in on-campus recruiters from last year.

So where are the jobs? NACE reports that 20-plus percent of employers say they'll probably do less traveling and more stay-at-home recruiting. That should translate into more regional hiring. ''They're going to be more targeted in the career fairs and colleges they visit,'' says Koc, adding that many employers will fall back on ''the previous success they've had at [a particular] school.''

Regional opportunities are all over the map, so to speak. The West offers the grimmest prospects. Four in 10 companies in that part of the U.S. say they will hire fewer college students. It's pretty awful in the Southeast, too, where companies project a 9.9% drop in jobs offered to freshwater pearl new grads. There's a mixed picture in the Midwest, where 14.3% of employers say they intend to increase hiring, while 35.7% plan a decrease (total projected college hiring in the Midwest will fall by 3.2%).

The most hopeful front is the Northeast, where 17.6% of companies say they will increase their hiring of 2010 college graduates; total employment of this group, they expect, will rise by more than 5.6%. ''The biggest reason for the somewhat better outlook in the Northeast is that financial firms are indicating an interest in college hiring again this year,'' says Koc. "The other is that federal government agencies are one of the only sources of growth in hiring over the past two years, and we locate those agencies in the Northeast.''

Unsurprisingly, federal, state and local governments--some of them huge recipients of stimulus tax dollars--will be the biggest potential employers. Indeed, 38.5% of government employers reported projected increase in college hiring. Close behind, 33.3% of trade industry employers--consisting mainly of the broad categories of wholesalers and retailers--think they'll be filling more jobs. ''I think people need to be paying attention to where stimulus money is directed: government, health care, education and energy,'' says Ohio State's Rice.

While many of these sectors are concentrated in the Northeast, there are also biotech industries in California and solar and wind companies in the Southeast and Midwest. Rice also reckons there will be opportunities in consulting and accounting. We have chronic cost-cutting, mostly, to pearl strand thank for that.

Everything, of course, depends on a generally upward GDP. ''There are indications the economy is improving,'' says Koc. ''But traditionally it takes six months of profitability before companies pick up for hiring.''

The red stuff continues to flow, and I don't mean corn-syrupy Halloween-costume blood. Far scarier are the fountains of red ink spurting from thousands of small businesses plagued by lack of demand, shortage of credit and crushing health care costs. The knee-jerk reaction for many cash-strapped Mom and Pop shops: squeeze pennies until they wail.

I've got some news for you: Cost-cutting alone won't guarantee survival. Yes, you need enough cash to gemstone necklace fill orders, remunerate employees and cover interest payments. Lose sight of the customer, though, and you might as well pack it in right now.

Mark Cornett, co-owner of Northern Interiors, a furniture retailer in Potsdam, N.Y., gets it. Typical furniture retailers charge as much as three times wholesale costs, followed by frequent deep discounts to entice shoppers. There are two problems with that model. First, those spikes are hard to plan for; second, customers end up having a relationship with those discounts, not the store itself. "Over-priced products that encourage customers to wait for the next huge sale is the norm," says Cornett, 52.

That's why Northern Interiors charges in the neighborhood of 1.8 times cost and sticks to it. "Our approach was to offer better pricing consistently and to market the customer experience, eventually building a loyal, repeat customer base."

With average revenue per ticket on the wane in the recession, Cornett also has squeezed more out of each operating dollar by taking a closer look at what his customers were buying. Result: He stocked more popular items, including futons and drapes, and displayed them more prominently on Northern's Web site, while recliners and mattresses temporarily took a backseat.

Cornett also rationalized his labor costs. "We have carefully tracked store traffic, adjusting store hours to control labor while assuring we are open when we need to pearl jewelry wholesale be," he says. Throw in some cutbacks in print advertising and Cornett has managed to slash operating expenses by 19% in the last 12 months. And thanks to his customer-focused approach, even the top line is starting to move in the right direction. Adds Cornett: "Rather than go home at night worried about the future, I feel like we are beginning to see some light."

Dan Cook, owner of Harry L Cook, a 95-year-old chain of dry cleaners (with three locations) in Syracuse, N.Y., has an even more basic approach to delighting customers. "It's as simple as treating people like you want to be treated," says Cook, 67. "We know everybody that walks in by name. I tell all of my employees that if you don’t know their first names you better know their last. Find out something that is unique about them, have an open ear. My goal is to send a customer home smiling and have their spouse say: 'You have been at the dry cleaners again, haven't you?'"

Forging those sorts of relationships means combing scads of data, every day, without fail: "When I come in I usually spend the first half an hour getting caught up on who got a promotion, who lost a loved one, whose kid won an award," says Cook.

Charismatic, dedicated customer service is nice; offering a better product is nicer. To separate himself from the pack, Cook provides off-season clothing storage free of charge. While the market for the service has dropped a bit with the trend away from wool and toward natural fibers, Cook says he regularly stores upward of 500 boxes in numerical and alphabetic order. "And by the way, we clean all of the clothes," he adds.

As for pinching pennies in the recession, Cook isn't going overboard. "We did no actual cost cutting, but we have watched costs very carefully, especially our payroll, which needs to be 30% to pearl earrings wholesale 32% of revenue," he says. "It can turn into 50% quickly if you don't watch it."

Cook's final piece of advice: "If it's raining, you should grab an umbrella and meet your customer at the car." Don't have an umbrella? Get one, because there are plenty of rainy days ahead.

Life ain't Leave It to Beaver--just ask any proprietor of a family-run business. When pressures mount in the real world, all that emotional health, stability, support and love the Cleavers had going on can yield to bouts of ugly dysfunction.

Credit the culprits--ranging from egotism to debilitating insecurity and need for reassurance--to an emotional loss from childhood. Even Thomas Watson, son to gemstone necklace the founder of IBM ( IBM - news - people ), in his book Father and Son & Co., My Life at IBM and Beyond, wrestled with the pain of not getting the acceptance and approval of his father--this, at age 72, after logging a stellar career as Big Blue's chief executive and being credited with bringing the company into the computer age.

In a family business, these psychological issues take on a whole new level of complexity, especially when it comes to the challenge of succession. Many entrepreneurs think it's enough to anoint their son or daughter and leave it at that. Others don't have any sort of succession plan at all.

If you want your business to live on long after you've retired to the links or a nice, sandy beach, you need to approach succession as carefully as you do your will. This starts with having a plan, then making sure all your family members and those with future ownership interests understand your intentions and are on board. Herewith, some tips:

Send the Children to Work Somewhere Else After College
We recently advised a growing and profitable staffing services firm with $15 million in annual revenue and operations in the Northeast, Florida and California. The founder had two children, Julie and Don (real names have been disguised). Julie, who looked upon her father as a titan of business, joined the company as a manager full time after college. Several years later, Julie's younger brother Don came on board, also right out of college. At first, both took heat from the other employees for being their father's favorites. While they eventually learned the business, the kids would have been better served logging a minimum of three years before signing on.
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Prepare for Everything
Shortly after Don joined the company, the unthinkable happened: Dad had a massive heart attack and died. The siblings were in a panic. They were young, unprepared and at a loss where to begin. In his will, Dad gave Julie 51% ownership of the business and Don 49%.

Julie's father had divorced their mother some years back, and there were two stepsisters from the new marriage. The bequeathing of the company to cultured pearl his two children without consideration for the new family piled on even more stress. Their mother was still bitter from the divorce, and Julie's and Don's windfall rankled. The kids suffered resentment from both sides of the family.

It gets more complicated. Don always felt emotionally neglected by his father--heavy baggage made suddenly heavier by Don's minority ownership stake. Don became erratic at work and was visibly miserable in meetings. No picnic for Julie.

In this case, the siblings needed to blame Dad--not each other. That's why a more clearly defined succession plan would have helped. Dad should have explained his desires to all family members affected by the decision, including the ex-wife, the new wife and the stepchildren. That's an uncomfortable conversation, but it saves far bigger hassles down the road.

Really Know Your Trusted Advisers
Julie felt very alone when she called for help. We determined that the company should shutter its Florida and California operations, as it did not have the capital to develop those markets. We decided to consolidate the business in New Jersey, which involved moving the accounting department north.

Enter Bob, head of the accounting department in Florida. Julie's father had appointed Bob, one of his closest friends, as a board member and trustee of the family trust funds. As we worked to develop a plan to move north, Bob was extremely resistant to the change. We first assumed it was about his loss of control, but then on closer inspection, we found that he had been siphoning funds for personal use. When confronted, he justified his draw citing Dad's tightwad ways.

Julie summarily terminated Bob, though she didn't sue him. (The northward transition happened as planned.) Think Julie wanted to deal with firing her Dad's good friend, on top of everything else that was going on? Lesson: Know who you are working with--and make sure your successors are comfortable with those relationships. After all, they're your friends, not theirs.

Get Counseling if You Need It
Julie was stressed out, pounded from all sides while dealing with Don's meltdown. We encouraged them both to seek psychiatric counseling. They agreed, and over the next several months began to resolve their issues. Within six months, they had become productive at work, although Don had resolved to sell his interest to wheat pearl Julie and pursue an M.B.A.

Happy ending? Sort of. To ease the company's cash drain, we developed a buyout plan that enabled Julie to pay out Don over a handful of years. Don's departure significantly reduced the stress between the siblings, and soon they were enjoying each others' spouses and kids. (Communication with other members of the family remains prickly.) As for the company, things have stabilized and operations are running fairly smoothly.

Still, it's hard not to think that so much of that turmoil could have been avoided had Dad had a plan.